Sky HD: PIXEL

What a wonderful, captivating way to bring to life a product benefit. Visually fun and stunning in a world where the norm would be to show the beautiful picture. 1861United, Milan, Italy.

Donations Needed

This poster for Care Fertility caught me off guard for a moment with its simplicity and its honestness. What a wonderful poster.McCann-Erickson, Manchester, United Kingdom.

Inspiration du jour

Interactive architecture. Top: a modular wall that responds to environment; blocks become translucent or opaque in response to light. Bottom: tiny, modular robots that have the ability to roll around each other to create different spatial states in real time. The possibilities of these are endless. Check out more here.

Amazing Stop Motion Animation

Stop what you are doing now, push play and slip soul-fully into a book coming to life. This is beautiful!

Warm and Fuzzy.

Knitted science. Bizarre, yet cozy. Check out more here.

Target Gets It

Consumers want fun. Check out the selected card found over at NOTCOT. Get the whole story there.

Clean it Up

With stop motion none-the-less. Nice message from an unexpected place. In the US too. Evolution Bureau, San Francisco, USA

Carpet Cleaning

More Panasonic guerilla work and cant say the core of the idea is great, but who doesn't want that rug? Beautiful work.

A Little Humor

Tough product to promote, but the placement and humor would at the least make it possible to gain awareness. Never get to see enough of this.

Memorable

Polar Bear from Plane Stupid on Vimeo.

That'll make you think twice and remember the facts. Mother.

Tough and Attractive

Armadillo Scooterwear Tough Enough from Armadillo Scooterwear on Vimeo.

This is wonderful, takes the soft edge off of scooters and is, what I hope, is a wake-up call to every flip flop, short wearing scooter rider out there, pavement hurts just as much moving at 10MPH. Oh, and watch out for the clowns.

K.I.S.S.

Looking for a gift, this would do just fine.

Simple, Beautiful

Winning over London, Paris and New York... and me with the Art Direction. Chase Cash.

Spacious Thoughts

Hypnotic visuals with a memorable beat. This one will stick with you on both fronts. Found this over at BoingBoing and it features N.A.S.A. (North America South America) with some input from Tom Waits and Kool Keith.

Doritos 626

Amazing idea for a website from Doritos, again.

Say it with a smile

Love the direction for these. Obviously a One Show Winner, but also took top broadcasting prize for the Gunn Report, you know the award show that measures both effectiveness and creativity. Definitely reaction worthy.

Creativity VRS Design

If, like me, you find it hard to convey what you do (to anyone that doesn't do it—clients, parents, girlfriends, account guys) and how it really differs from, lets say, whittling—this is an amazing tool that can help. It will remind you that you are highly trained, and much more than the sum of your parts.

Thanks to Andrew Webb for the find.

50 Great Designs

The Dieline has a top 50 list of their favorite adult beverage designs. Definitely worth checking out more of the work over there if you are interested in having a better looking liquor cabinet this holiday season.

Fall In

How to fall into a war isn't the most conceptual line but the simple hand cut type is just wonderful. Might have lost its impact if it were illustrated.Tita, Milano, Italy.

Between the Folds

What looks to be an amazing documentary on the connection between art and science in origami will be screened for free through Starz and RMPBS November 24th. Go here to get tickets, should be fun. Should be art. Should be eye opening.

Hot Wax

Want to get the coloring urge out of your system? Pokemon not going to satisfy you, then you need to get your hands on this more adult themed coloring book by Tyson Mcadoo. Not exactly sure who needs this but the art is stellar, worth picking up.

Rethink Can Packaging

How about it, would you buy this? I would, and not only for the earth friendly thinking. Mostly for the design. Concept by Harc Lee.

Two as One

Pretty well coordinated acting on a simple message. Amazing take from what was, I'm sure, the brief and bringing a little life and fun to it. Saatchi & Saatchi, Sydney, Australia

Stop motion walk down memory lane.

Oh how I long for the days of craft, hand crafted, artistry. Worth the five minutes.

ADCD Student Show

You're looking at the Best of Show winner at the 2009 ADCD Annual Show, a simple, yet spectacular poster concocted by Shanna McNear from Colorado State University. Shanna also received a scholarship along with prizes donated from our generous sponsors.

The gallery opening was last Friday at the Rocky Mountain College of Art & Design (RMCAD) and displayed the next generation of creative artists hailing from Colorado and Wyoming schools. 

Here are the 2009 winners! Congrats!

• Shanna McNear, CSU, Best of Show and Best in Category/Graphic Design

• Ryan Secora, RMCAD, Best in Category/Digital Illustration and Best in Category/Traditional Illustration and Judge's Choice

• Danielle Alvarado, Univ. of Wyoming, Best in Category/Packaging + Judge's Choice

• Jeffrey Steffonich, Metro State, Best in Category/Packaging and Best in Category/Logo, Identity + Judge's Choice

• Elisa Wikey, RMCAD, Best in Category/Direct Mail

• Lauren Kobayashi, CSU, Best in Category/Editorial Design

• Jennifer Juarez, Community College of Denver, Best in Category/Graphic Design

• A.J. Sapala, RMCAD, Best in Category/Photography

• Aaron Bailey, CSU, Best in Category/Print Advertising

• Chris Branson, Art Institute, Best in Category/Publication

• Louise Eckardt, Univ. of Wyoming, Judge's Choice

• Andy Lindberg, Univ. of Wyoming, Judge's Choice

• Hannah Beningo, Univ. of Wyoming, Judge's Choice 

Many thanks to hand out:

Thanks to the judging panel: Stephanie Fay, Creative Director of Ripcord; Randall Erkelens, Creative Director/Founder of Section 45; Eric Nance, Creative Director and Founder of Epiphany Graphics; and Jay Roth, Senior Copywriter of Integer.

Also, big thanks to sponsors for supplying prizes to Best of Show, Best in Category and Judge's Choice winners.

• Apple

• Wacom

• Adobe

• Meininger

• RMCAD

And thanks to Village Roaster and Chipotle for coffee and food, respectively. 

Great show. Can't wait until next year.

Multidirectional Locomotion

Can the Halodeck be far behind? Technology is so much fun.

Veer Contest Winner

Veer had a contest, it was to make their logo out of anything and this won. Seen the idea, but the execution is very cool.

Veer Contest Submission from J.D. on Vimeo.

Want to Launch a Phone?

Why not make it entertaining and throw in some wonderful animation while you're at it.

Pregnadel

Controversial, absolutely. That aside, talk about a package that will be noticed and make you consider what is the product does and, possibly, make you think about what this product means to you. Brilliant idea that is a highly conceptual oasis among the conceptual-less world of drugs. Via thedieline.com

No Photoshop Necessary

Liu Bolin paints himself to fit into these backgrounds. Amazing!

Grabbing you

Fun interaction until it ruins your clothes or is a lint riddled magnet, but seriously, props to the lateral thinking.

Blacknoise

Fun for a Monday. Check out Black Noise's video using a mix of animation and camera moves. Got to give props for the boom box beats.

Couldn't resist

Maybe because as the core of comedy and advertising, its really just a dick joke.

Bar Codes From Japan

It occurs to me that sure you will have to convince your client that this will still work, but the attention to detail that is needed to notice this and execute to it might just be more important to your client. That attention to detail might even be noticed by your client's customers which may lead to more sales and more work for you.

Japanese Bar codes from Japanese firm d-barcode. Which also makes me wonder why they needed a full firm for this detail?

Presenting the Concepts, Picking a Winner

Photos, top to bottom:

1. The Winning Team:

Concept: Burn the Wall

Mentor

David Schiedt : Creative Director, Buster York Creative

Students

Loni Huston : Metro State College of Denver, Senior

Mia Huang : Colorado State University, Senior

Kyle Olsen : Colorado State University, Senior

2. Part of the Burn the Wall concept included tagging pizza boxes so the art travels

3. The three presenting teams were very organized with their rationale.

Honorable Mention

Concept: Rail Car

Mentor:

Jay Roth : Senior Writer, Integer Group AND ADCD President!

Students:

Brooke Schott : Metro State College of Denver, Senior

Adrian Newman : Metro State College of Denver, Senior

Kate Dzintars : University of Denver, Senior

Lynette Losasso : Arapahoe Community College, Sophmore

4. They were also excited about their concepts.

Honorable Mention

Concept: The Scrawl

Mentor:

Steve Koloskus: Principal, Extra Strength Marketing

Students:

Lauren Shviraga : Metro State College of Denver, Senior

Katie Matteo : Colorado State University, Senior AND ADCD Student Advocate!

Daniel Ahrens : Metro State College of Denver, Junior

Kendall and Peter discuss the problem and the many solutions proposed

5. Kendall and Jamie talk to the teams about their concepts and pick three of the ten to present.

At about 9pm, Kendall Peterson from UAF and Jamie Webb, the brief writer, circulated room, talking to the teams about their concepts. It was impressive to watch their involvement, their sincerity at treating this like a real opportunity for these students. That's part of what makes The Brief so great: it is a real opportunity. The work will get used by the client.

They chose 3 teams to present their ideas, and in the end, one team, one concept to follow through with. Remember the basic problem at hand:

How can we create and launch a newsworthy art program that enables true self-expression?

The idea centered around getting street artists to express themselves in ways that are both satisfying and profitable for them and whose format or venue is acceptable and appealing to the city and community (read: legal and non-vandalising). The concepts tonight ranged from movable train car installations to pizza boxes in actual use, and included ways for the artists to exhibit and auction or otherwise sell their work.

In the end, the team with the pizza box concept won the project. That's just the kernel of the idea, really. The concept, titled Burn the Wall after the colloquial language of showing up another artist, included auctions, subversive formats, and a "rebellious" aesthetic, and is easily executable on a variety of budgets and scalable to fit the needs and growth of the client's program. (I'd personally love to see some of the Cherry Creek style boutiques and chains sign-up to have their bags tagged beautifully; Ann Taylor, Betsey Johnson, etc, with traveling art that reaches across age, style and economic gaps would be interesting.)

Congratulations to the winning team and the client. And thanks to all who participated in this year's Student Brief. Another great ADCD event.

Blackout at the Briefies!

Okay, that's a little extreme. There wasn't actually a blackout, but the frenzy of work caused a bit of a logjam in the bandwidth and, thus, yours truly could not access the very important ADCD blog dashboard, which meant that you were left hanging last night. Apologies for that. I know you were pacing the floor, waiting for the next post with hardly a breath exiting your lungs (well done, btw, that's a trick to pace and hold your breath simultaneously!) It was state-of-the-art liveblogging, after all, right? What is "liveblogging," anyway, really? It occurs to me now that next year we should consider Twitter.

Anyhoo, back to the action. Kind of.

Practice Safe Design...

Use a concept.

That comes from Steve Koloskus. And that's really what it's about here. Without the concept, the client will go away without a solution that really works. It's a good reminder for those in the industry and those, like the students here, hoping to be.

Last year, Steve Whittier, the man from Factory Labs who wrote last year's brief, told the students that executing the concept should be a given, that they wouldn't be here (at an event like this) if they couldn't do that. He reminded them though, that the concept is the thing to put the effort into. We're about to see what kind of concepts our teams tonight have come up.

10 minutes!

Peter stops by Steve Koloskus' team's table to give the 10 minute warning. Steve is Principal/CD at Extra Strength Marketing. Along with Steve, tonight's team mentors include Andrew Hoffman, Art Director at Motive, Roland Leppek, CD at Xuma, David Schiedt, CD at Buster York, Becky Clark, Senior Designer at Denver Art Museum, and ADCD's own Jay Roth, Senior Copywriter at Integer. Jamie Webb, Senior Cog. at CP+B is here as well. He wrote the brief for the client. We are grateful for all the effort they've put into tonight's success.

Concepts

Students working. We're about halfway there. At this point the teams have likely got 1 idea out of many that they've come up with and the task now is to figure out how to sell it to the client. Why does the idea work? How do we implement the idea? These are the questions at hand now.

Briefies Underway

Kendall Peterson from UAF represents the client tonight.

It's 6:30pm and this year's Student Brief is well underway. There are 10 teams of 3 or 4 students each, representing 7 schools: Metro State, Rocky Mountain College of Art & Design, Colorado State University, CCA Film School, U. of Northern Colorado, and Arapahoe Community College. Their elbows rest on table size sheets of butcher paper, sharing and recording ideas. Laptops are open and ready, but so far most of the work is in the conversations.

At the head of each table is the guru assigned to the team, a local senior copywriter, creative director, art director, etc. They look as involved in the process thus far as each of the students. Collaboration is the word of the evening.

But let me back up just a bit. The brief this year is presented by the Urban Arts Fund. They ar epart of DOCA, the Denver Office of Cultural Affairs. UAF was created, in part, to be advocates for developing and funding positive outlets for artistic expression of todays youth. Basically, the brief comes down to this:

How can we create and launch a newsworthy art program that enables true self-expression?

Stay tuned for more action on the Brief.

Artificial Paradise

ARTIFICIAL PARADISE,INC. from Jp Frenay on Vimeo.

The execution is beautiful and really love the detail that they explore the mechanisms that bring the concept to life. Wonderfully organic machines. As for the concept itself, we'll let them tell us...

Artificial Paradise, Inc is an experimental film anticipating a future where a major corporation has developed an unique software, based on organic virtual reality, which holds all the lost memories of humankind. A user connects to this database of the forgotten…what is he searching for?

Animal Crackers

Nice re-imagination of a lost-its-shine-after-your-three product. The idea combines two flavors in separate containers. Once you fold open the box you are greeted with a pop-up animal. Simple clean and fun with a wonderful surprise. Would like to see the work of student Meg Eaton come to life (and would be curious what would happen to the cost of the product) if only a client believed in the fun that a consumer would spend for.

Pencil Full of Lead

Amazing animation work that crosses over to our world smoothly, but watch it because it's just so fun.

Shortened URLs ruining the internet.

From Open the Future:

"The use of URL-shortening services is a classic example of short-term need trumping long-term resilience.

Shortened URLs:

• are not human-readable, and even the versions with user-generated mnemonics are little better than crude tags;
• don't provide contextual clues, which would offer a way to find the information later (if the article has expired, for example) by looking up relevant keywords or related concepts;
• rely on the continued presence of the particular shortener—any downtime or disappearance kills potentially millions of links.

That is, URL-shorteners violate three key principles of resilient design: they offer no transparency, no redundancy, and no decentralization. They're classic single-points of failure.

As a result, shortened URLs have little or no reference or archival value. A dead short URL is far worse than a dead standard URL, in fact, because (a) you have no way of getting contextual meaning, and (b) you can't even go look up the address on the Internet Archive. This is a real problem for those of us who think of the Internet as a tool for building knowledge. For better or for worse, services such as Twitter have gone from being ephemeral conversation media to being used as tools of collaborative awareness about the world. We can no longer assume that a link in a short message is of only transient value.

Yet many of us (including me) rely heavily on shorteners when using URLs "conversationally," such as on Twitter or in an instant message chat. They take far fewer characters than a typical URL; in length-limited media such as Twitter, that's a critical advantage.

So, in the immortal phrase, what is to be done?

Given that the need for URL shortening will remain as long as we use character-limit media such as Twitter or SMS, I can think of a few steps that would help to return some of the information resilience to the system:

• Embed shortening "behind the scenes" in Twitter and the like, so that senders just enter a full URL, and recipients see the full URL whenever possible. The full URL should show up on the web version, so that the real address gets archived.
• Google, Bing, Yahoo, and the other search engines should auto-translate any shortened URLs they stumble upon when indexing pages, so that at the very least the cached version contains the full address. The Internet Archive should definitely be doing this.
• All URL-shortening services should agree to make the records of short URL -> full URL links available to search and archival sites, under appropriate privacy conditions (e.g., all names/IP addresses of users stripped out, data only available if the company goes under, data only available after five years, users can choose to allow the URL link to expire).

Any of these would be an enormous step forward, and the combination would make for a much more resilient system. Admittedly, all of these steps require a bit of coding work, and aren't going to be implemented overnight. However, nobody said resilience was easy—just necessary."

—Jamais Cascio

Wow.

Puts things in perspective. Beautifully.

Someone had the same Brief

They are nice, simple ideas for completely different products.We just think they had the bad luck of hitting the same ad blog (I believe in advertising) at the same time. Subtle differences in execution for the same idea. Smart: BBDO, New York. Dance: Y&R, Chicago.

Go Colorado Go!

The ever-so-juicy Communication Arts Design Annual just hit mailboxes and book shelves nationwide and we're representing well. Give it up for these firms. Whoop, whoop!

Hirschmann Design for Trellis Healthcare logo

The Katalina Group for a brochure for Bern footwear

Genesis for a catalog for Petunia Pickle Bottom

Also check out rabble+rouser's widely-talked about iPhone app for Weber Grills in the exhibit section. Congrats for keeping us on the map, everyone!

Lucky Cat Candy Packet

So elegant, so fun.